'The Convenient Lie: "We Can Always Run It Manually!"
Link:
y2ktimebomb.com
Comment:
On August 27, I spoke before a meeting of 500 people -- 5% of a
local town. At that meeting, representatives of several industries
spoke: banking, telephone, electrical power.
When pressed by someone in the audience, the representative of the
power company insisted they ciuld run the entire company on manual
systems without compliant computers. Forget about noncompliant
chips. The company can do it manually.
I asked him straight: Can they run the SCADA (supervisory control
and data acquisition) system without telecommunications? That's the
computerized system that tells them how much power is running
through the lines. "Yes," he said.
A week before I had been told by an engineer with a large urban
power company that without SCADA, they would fry the lines
permanently. "There is no way we could run the system manually."
I guess engineers don't agree.
I told the audience this:
"No system can be switched to pre-computer manual operations
without training. Any outfit that claims that it can be run manually had
better have a highly trained technical staff to take over in 2000. Does
the outfit have a training manual? How much money has it
budgeted?"
Any outfit that does not have the staff being trained right now is lying
when it says that it can be run manually. It cannot be run manually by
phantom workers. The men who knew how to run it manually were
fired 30 years ago. The manual systems were replaced. The industry
did not spend hundreds of billions of dollars on computerization so as
to have two separate operation systems. They spent the money to
get rid of manual systems.
Any time you hear some representative tell you his public utility can
be run manually, ask five questions:
1. How many trained personnel do you need, including substitutes, to
run your system manually?
2. How many are currently undergoing training for this task, and how
many have finished it?
3. May I come in and see your training manual that you use to train
these people?
4. How much money has your company budgeted to train this staff?
5. How much has already been spent?
You must call their bluff. They're lying. They have no intention of
trying to run anything manually. It's just a PR ploy. It's Monica
Lewinsky syndrome. Nobody suffers any consequences for lying to
the public.
But can't they be sued for lying, i.e., misleading the public? Not if all
companies in the industry collapse for the same reason. They will
share the blame, or pass it on to a higher authority: "An act of God."
When you catch one of them in a lie this big, you can rest assured: he
knows that it can't be fixed by anyone, so he knows he can't be
successfully sued.
Training to convert to manual systems won't work, of course. The
power industry can't be run manually, and it's too late to fix the code.
Besides, nobody in the industry will pay any attention to such
warnings. But at least it lets the industry know that you don't believe
the lie any more.
Dick Mills, who is a public optimist about the power grid, recently
issued a warning to the industry: begin contingency planning. This
includes training. This is the best advice that anyone could give the
power industry -- not because the advice could work at this late
date, but because it's time to call their bluff.
This is from Westergaard's site.
* * * * * * * * *
. . . Isn't there already a national emergency plan in place for such as
critical infrastructure such as power? No, not to my knowledge.
Please write and tell me if I'm wrong.
Never before, has there been a threat to the power system of such
sweeping scope and magnitude as Y2K. There was no need for a
national electric-power emergency plan. Prudence requires that we
have such a plan, not only for Y2K but also for other future threats.
I foresee that this plan will need to span national, state, local, public,
private, utility and non-utility boundaries. How might we accomplish
that? I've been told that existing presidential executive orders allow
the entire industry to be nationalized at the stroke of a pen in case of
emergency. Thus the authority exists, but it will do no good unless
there are plans and trained organizations in place to use it effectively.
There are numerous mitigating possibilities to be considered. That is
true of not only to electric power but also to all industries and all
facets of the Y2K problem. . . .
It is already too late to finish Y2K remediation for many companies,
but it is not too late for disaster preparations. To actually get
practical and practiced disaster preparedness plans in place, we must
accomplish three things. I see these three as my working goals. I
hope you do the same. . . .
We must plan, train, and practice the implementation of emergency
procedures. Those are key elements of all emergency services like
fire and police. In the Y2K case, we have to combine strangers into
teams, invent new roles, and practice. That takes time.
Link:
y2ktimebomb.com
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